Welcome Home
by PenNameShenanigans
Summary: When Jai returns from the field without Annie, Auggie has something to say about it.  A/A.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own _Covert Affairs_ or any of the associated characters. **

August Anderson's nose was assaulted as he stormed through the closed door into Joan Campbell's office. His senses, already heightened due to the loss of his sight, were fueled by an unnatural burst of anger-fueled adrenaline. When Jai Wilcox calmly strode into the technical operations room of the DPD sans field partner Annie Walker, Auggie flew into a fit of rage. The handler lost all communications with Wilcox and Walker in the field after the consulate in which the two were operating took fire from local drug cartels. The drug lords lobbed homemade grenades at the brick building and took aim at those trying to escape. All communication systems went down, including the secure cell phones the agents carried. Auggie was still trying to figure out how small time cartels could knock out encrypted lines; the uncertainty of losing his operatives in the field weighed on him almost as much as the fact that it was Annie Walker that he lost.

The op had gone horribly awry and the agents were lucky to make it across the city to safety without being killed. Auggie suspected the op was compromised in some way, but without proof he was stuck fuming at his desk. That is, until Jai Wilcox arrived to badger the tech team for losing communication. He wasn't sure why he was so livid - that Jai arrived to ream him out for something he himself did not understand, or the fact that Annie wasn't with him. Two agents were left blind in the field, and only one returned. Any handler would be upset with those numbers, but the fact that _Annie_ had not returned made him all the more anxious. It was not in his nature to be prone to fits of anxiety; Auggie was notorious for erupting like an angry volcano when he displayed any strong emotion. Some in the Agency suspected this was because of the accident, but in fact this was a coping mechanism from growing up with four mean older brothers.

The walk to Joan's office served to increase his frustration tenfold. Not only could he not figure out how communications went down, his fear for Annie grew exponentially with every step. She wasn't the type of agent to allow the medical staff to treat her unless she was seriously injured. By the time he reached Joan's door, Auggie was full of a head of steam and ready to let loose on his superior. While perhaps not the most intelligent career move, Joan had weathered Auggie's outbursts and once been on the receiving end of a thrown set of headphones. His aim was surprisingly accurate for a man rendered blind.

The scents stopped Auggie in his racks upon entry. He took a deep breath to let loose on Joan and instead was floored by the layers of scents. Joan's perfume smelled of roses; the important smells were mixed with the innocuous smell. The harsh antiseptic stung his nostrils coupled with the tangy smell of fresh blood and the unique scent of cotton indicated a relatively new wound of moderate damage at a minimum. That was not what stopped the blind handler, though - it was the underlying hint of grapefruit.

Letting out an audible sigh of relief, Auggie crouched uncannily close to Annie's ear. Taking a deep breath, he greeted her almost reverently. "Welcome home," he sighed into her ear. When she did not respond, he wrapped his left hand around the back of her chair and leaned in further, his nose almost touching behind the shell of her ear, breath hot on her neck. "Annie, I missed you," he whispered reverently, momentarily forgetting about the icy blonde superior boring holes in the two.

**A/N: ** I hope you enjoyed the drabble. Both Joan and Annie's POV on the exchange are written and there is an idea for a prequel floating around in my head if there is interest in reading it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own _Cover Affairs _or any of the associated characters. **

Joan Campbell watched her favorite handler storm into her office like hell on wheels. On more than one occasion her husband warned her about the aggressive outbursts whispered around the Agency stemming from her underling. Even with his sight, August Anderson was a force to reckon with when he lost his temper. After the bitterness of losing his eyes and being yanked from the field, his tirades took on a harder edge. Once, she had to dodge a flying pair of headphones thrown in her direction not long after she benched the former field agent. She had not noticed any streaks of aggression recently except when it came to one Annie Walker. A gentle - or sometimes not-so-gentle - touch and the lull of Annie's voice could stop even Hurricane Auggie in its tracks.

Privately, Joan appreciated the new recruit if only to serve to keep Auggie calm and in a healthy frame of mind. When the handler lost coms with his agents in the field, Joan noticed his frustration tinged with fear. It was natural for a handler to fear for his agents when he lost them in the field; her own handler James would be downright unseemly until she returned from the field when she worked field ops. Others may be suspicious of the unnaturally close relationship between agent and handler - well, unnatural for the Agency - but she not-so-secretly encouraged the two working together under supervision. Either had the potential to get into hot water but together they were incorrigible. It was easier to keep tabs on them when she knew that one would generally be on the other end of the line or, at most, at the other end of the bullpen from the other. Auggie gave Annie the confidence she needed to swim with the sharks and Annie gave Auggie the thrill of the field he needed.

More than once, she found herself explaining her rationale to Arthur. "I cannot just _break them up_, as you so charmingly put it," she huffed before the op Wilcox and Walker went on went to hell in a hand basket. Arthur was less than thrilled about the close relationship Annie enjoyed with her handler, although Joan was not in the loop as to why the relationship would cause a problem. She had her suspicions, what with Wilcox coming into the division and the manhunt through DPD, but she would keep them to herself until the timing was right. Joan was glad she made the decision to keep Auggie as Annie's catcher; the younger agent was too green to handle someone as stern as her handler had been. The little trio had an interesting dynamic and it centered on the blonde operative. Whether or not Annie realized Wilcox's game was another story, and that was one headache Joan did not look forward to. She suspected that the charming field agent was scamming her operative at her husband's request and not only would Annie be crushed, but Auggie would unleash righteous anger, much like he looked about to do at present.

Joan could visibly see the instant that Auggie realized Annie was in the room and knew the tongue lashing he was about to give her was on its way out the door. The change was instantaneous: the anger evaporated from his face and his posture, rigid with arms slightly bent at his sides and hands balled into fists, relaxed. He ran a hand through his hair and his pursued lips drew into a relieved grin. Even his sightless eyes softened. Joan wished he could show the CCTV footage of this very instant to Auggie months from now when he denied romantic feelings for the blonde operative. In the deep recesses of her jaded heart, she hoped the techie and the spy would realize the depth of their relationship and act on it.

With a careful eye, she watched the handler greet his operative. With what Joan would consider an invasion of personal space, the dark haired man crouched close to the blonde and welcomed her home. When Annie did not respond, she watched him lean in even closer, his lips on the shell of her ear. She was surprised at the intimacy of the action and again wondered just how many months she would have to sit on the footage after all.

**A/N: **Thank you for all of the reviews, I truly appreciate them as a new fanfic writer. I thrive on the feedback and sincerely hope you enjoyed this installment.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **I apologize to all who read this during the day. The formatting was on crack and I have gone back to fix it.

Annie Walker was groggy. After an op gone horribly wrong, flying in the cargo hold of an airplane she and Jai snuck on to, letting the senior operative stitch the shoulder wound left over from a drug lord's bullet on said airplane with a sewing needle, and med staff doping her up on pain killers, all she wanted was sleep. Joan retrieving her personally from the med unit did not bode well for the rest of her day; she highly doubted the vetting agents clued her boss into the fact that she was rendered completely useless for all productive purposes while on pain killers.

The first time Annie went under anesthesia was three days before her nineteenth birthday. Her wisdom teeth were impacted and necessitated oral surgery to remove them. Not only did Annie wake up half an hour later from the anesthesia than she was supposed to, she vomited for twelve hours straight after waking up. The Vicodin prescription was not much better; instead of vomiting, she was groggy and slept for almost four straight days. Since that time, she refused all pain medication stronger than Advil by choice. Until today.

It was not the first time Annie was on the receiving end of a gunshot wound, but it was the first time she had an inexperienced CIA operative with basic field med courses from seven years prior on the Farm patch her up in the cargo hold of an airplane. She felt slightly guilty for taking the sewing kit that passed TSA standards and the snuggly black t-shirt from some woman's baggage but figured it was just another casualty of flying. Hopefully the airline would reimburse her. By the time they arrived in Langley, Annie contemplated begging med for something to dull the pain. There were dots of blood gathering across the wound where Jai attempted to patch her up; ruefully she surmised he had not been in the top of his class in Field Med at the Farm. Fortunately for her, the attending physician had far more experience than Field Med.

She almost felt for Jai. Running for her life was something Annie felt she did weekly, but the Prince had been out of the field in London for a long time. Whatever his history - she did not trust him completely, and most likely never would - he was not readily equipped to handle an agent like her. She cursed as she dodged bullets and baseball slid into him behind one of the brick walls, leaving a nasty bruise on his hip. She called for Auggie in her ear as they crawled behind the building and for one brief moment, when she knew she lost him, she felt her whole body shake. She felt safer with Auggie around, only if it was just in her ear.

When she was overly stressed or emotional, Auggie was her go to. She was fully confident that she could disarm a nuclear warhead if she heard his voice giving her the instructions. Once upon a time she wondered if her blind faith in him would get her killed. Now she knew that blind faith would be the one thing to save her. Even without his voice in her ear coaxing her to stay calm and staying in contact every step of the way, he would do his damnedest to help her in whatever way. The thin, attractive man with the buzz cut - Navy doctor, if she had to guess - called for her to be doped to high heaven before ripping out the field stitches, cleaning the wound, and stitching her back up again. Fleetingly, she wondered where Auggie was and what he was thinking. As the opiates set in, one of her last thoughts was if he would hold her hand if he came in.

Annie flopped into the chair opposite Joan's desk when the to blonde women arrived in Joan's office. She knew that Joan would be frustrated with her inability to focus despite her best attempts and did not look forward to the debriefing. All she wanted was something comfy to lay on, although she briefly contemplated sleeping under her desk in the bull pen until the first set of pain killers wore off to the point that she could drive. Jai would drive her home, she surmised, but she did not want to impose on him nor did she want his presence. Annie wished that perhaps Auggie would offer to stay with her while she was a lump. For some reason, that thought made her smile; a frown marred her face when she realized she had not yet come into contact with Auggie.

She did not notice the slight musk that preceded Auggie's entrance to Joan's office, still lost in thought about that very same person. The painkillers were making her slower than normal and her mind wandered to thoughts of Auggie, pillows, sleep, Mingus, and a stuffed bear named Toby. She did not notice someone crouching by her right side and calling her name. She did, however, notice the warm minty breath puffing across her ear and neck as she heard the voice she had been waiting for since she lost communications. He couldn't see it, but she could feel a smile splitting her face in two.

"I missed you, too," she sighed softly and leaned into him. It was good to be home.

**A/N 2: **Sorry about the wait for part three. I still don't think I have it right; Annie's POV escapes me for some reason. The "Welcome Home" arc is officially complete, but there will be more A/A goodness in the "Welcome Home" world soon.

Reviews are love!


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